Previously, you required a Microsoft Bing authentication key to attach Microsoft Bing Maps as rasters. In Update 7, this is no longer required. If you are a CONNECTED User, you can display the Microsoft Bing Maps imagery from the View Attributes dialog itself. Another reason to get CONNECTED
Let us see how this works. Just sign in from the CONNECTION Client and attach a GCS to your 2D or 3D design model. You will see a new section in the View Attributes dialog, called Background Map.
To view the Bing Map imagery, from the Background Map drop-down, select one of the following options:
- Street Map – a cartographic type map with roads and place names
- Aerial – aerial photograph of the earth
- Hybrid - a hybrid of aerial photography and roads and place names
The Elevation Offset field defines the distance above or below the Z=0 plane at which the background data is drawn. The default of -1.0 works well for 2D data. For 3D data, it depends on the elevation of the data in the model.
The Transparency option is provided to set the transparency of the background data.
Check a sample background map below.
Few more things to know –
- The background map settings are saved to the view undo buffer, so the View Previous and View Next tools work for the maps.
- The background map settings are saved to saved views, and applied when a saved view is applied.
- When a background map is displayed in a view, the reset pop-up menu contains the Show Background Map Providers option. Selecting it opens an information window displaying the imagery providers.
